Man, this was a fun read, largely because I could have written so much of it myself. I was 7 in 1979, too, I was a huge sci fi geek, too (in my case, the genesis was Star Wars and old '50s sci fi movies that I watched every Saturday afternoon with my dad), and saw the Black Hole at the theater with big expectations. …

That "Shit, I just got here" line of Popeye's puts into words what often hits me about D-Day: thousands of men trained 2+ years for that one day and then died before they could do a single goddamn thing, whether they were mowed down in the surf, shot while sneaking around in the woods during the night, blown up in…